TWC caps will include $150 "unlimited"

Time Warner Cable’s expanded trials of metered internet service will include significantly higher average caps and a pseudo-unlimited option, the company’s COO Landel Hobbs said in an online statement. After facing criticism for offering a maximum cap of just 40GB per month in Texas trials with unlimited overage fees, the provider is now boosting its original 5GB-40GB range for Road Runner service to 10GB-60GB and is adding a 100GB tier for $75 per month. It will also limit the overage charges themselves to a maximum of $75 extra per month and, practically, restore unlimited Internet access at a price of $150 per month.

Some markets will also get DOCSIS 3.0 access at $99 per month for 50Mbps downloads and 5Mbps uploads, though it’s not specified whether these users will be subject to the same caps as regular users on the DOCSIS 2.0 network.

Hobbs nonetheless maintains that caps are necessary and claims that “industry analysts” have warned capacity on many internet providers may run out by 2012, purportedly forcing carriers to increase their prices to both discourage excessively heavy downloading and help fund network upgrades. A bandwidth-based model theoretically keeps use in check while allowing the truly light users to pay as little as $15 per month.

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SDV - Will it impact you?

For those of you that don’t have a Tivo DVR, this might not be an issue. But for others(like me), it’s driving me bonkers. My cable company Time Warner has started implementing this thing called SDV, or Switched Digital Video. With satellite providers Dish Network and DirecTV promising so many channels in HD, the cable industry says they need to increase its capacity and “Switched Digital Video” allows them to add more channels without expanding their systems. However, once your cable provider enables SDV, any channel that is “switched” will be blacked out to consumers using a CableCARD in their HDTVs.

This is from the Tivo website:

Switched Digital Video (SDV) is a new technology that allows cable providers to expand the programming you receive by sending certain channels to customer homes only when the channels are requested. If you have a TiVo HD, TiVo HD XL or Series 3 HD DVR with CableCARDs, you could see a blank screen on a number of channels if your cable provider makes the transition to SDV. The good news is that TiVo has worked with your cable provider to develop a solution at no cost to you.

This is what you need to do:

1. Watch for communications about the transition to SDV from your cable company.
2. Call your cable provider to get a FREE Tuning Adapter.
3. Install the adapter by plugging it into your cable line and the USB port on your TiVo DVR, or have a cable company technician install it.
4. Continue to enjoy your TV and TiVo DVR in the same way you always have.

TiVo does not distribute Tuning Adapters – only your cable provider can do that – but with the most current software update, your HD TiVo DVR is fully compatible and ready to display SDV channels as soon as a Tuning Adapter is installed.

Of course my local provider does not have these tuning adapters yet, and has not even announced when they will have them available. So I’m paying for many channels that I don’t receive, which is driving me frickin bonkers. Are you one of these people? I’m going to be switching to DirecTV if this is not fixed very soon.